In the dimly lit inner sanctum of the Obsidian Mansion, silence reigned as ruthlessly as the dictator that sat upon a heap of bones and ashes, the light from sputtering torches glinting from a mountain of gilded treasure, stretching shadows into grotesque, tortured nightmares. No living thing dared approach the beast, whose scales of ebony seemed to siphon the vibrancy out of the world. Not even the rats and roaches dared to stray too close.

  It was here, on the unassailable peaks of the impassable Coldridge Mountains, that the Hero’s Party led forth the charge to free Humanity from the shackles of the Destroyer. The entry to the great hall burst open, the wrought iron reinforcements barring the great doors wrenched from their holdings as splinters of nigh-impervious [Heartwood] exploded like a tornado striking so much unbound straw. A figure, wearing shining, golden armor, emerged from the wreckage, his tall form and broad shoulders themselves a shield for his companions.

  The beast, for her part, did not so much as flinch.

  The [Paladin] thrust his greatsword into the solid stone floor, cleaving abyssal flooring like butter. He thrust his arm forth and demanded judgment upon the Destroyer, who lazily opened an eyelid.

  “Your reign of terrony ends here, foul creature!”

  “Foolish mortals! Who dares enter the sacred-”

  “Cut! CUT!!”

  ?

  Fourteen pairs of eyes turned to face a small, angry little figure furiously emoting at the side of the room. The gnome was mostly hidden in the shadows behind some pillars, along with a pair of halflings.

  After all, none of them actually wanted to be seen in the shot.

  To look at them, one would see a bizarre sight: each wore a mishmash of different armor types and styles, contrasting greatly with the small army decked out in sets of full plate or the most enchanted robes.

  But none of that mattered, because this wasn’t a real raid and the gnome said it made him look snazzy.

  “Look, Barry, it’s either terror or tyranny. One or the other. Terrony isn’t a word. Can’t you take this a little bit seriously? We’re working up toward the season finale here!”

  The tall human in the shining gold plate took off his helmet, revealing a well-defined face with a jawline that could cut steel. His nose was high and heroic, his cheekbones were prominent, and his ice blue eyes seemed like they could pierce a man’s soul and deliver the judgment of his deity.

  He had the decency to look abashed.

  “Sorry boss, I was just, you know, rollin’ with it.”

  The voice that came out did not fit a man of his stature, sounding much closer to a gangling youth than a hardened veteran of many battles. The gnome shook his head. Whatever “it” was, it wasn't rolling.

  “Don’t…worry about it, Barry. Let’s take it from the top.”

  ?

  …in the dimly lit inner sanctum of the Obsidian Mansion, silence reigned as ruthlessly as the dictator that sat upon a heap of bones and ashes, the light from sputtering torches glinting from a mountain of gilded treasure, stretching shadows into grotesque, tortured nightmares. No living thing dared approach the beast, whose scales of ebony seemed to siphon the vibrancy out of the world. Not even the rats and roaches dared to stray too close.

  It was here, on the unassailable peaks of the impassable Coldridge Mountains, that the Hero’s Party led forth the charge to free Humanity from the shackles of the Destroyer. The entry to the great hall burst open, the wrought iron reinforcements barring the great doors wrenched from their holdings as splinters of nigh-impervious [Heartwood] exploded like a tornado striking so much unbound straw. A figure, wearing shining, golden armor, emerged from the wreckage, his tall form and broad shoulders themselves a shield for his companions.

  The beast, for her part, did not so much as flinch.

  The [Paladin] thrust his greatsword into the solid stone floor, cleaving abyssal flooring like butter. He thrust his arm forth and demanded judgment upon the Destroyer, who lazily opened an eyelid.

  “Vile creature! Your reign of terror-”

  “-sniff-...the hell…Joel, did you just fart?”

  “Dude, wasn’t me-”

  “GOD DAMNIT, Joey!” Kyle raged, once again stopping the scene short. “Freakin’ mute yourself when you’re not in scene!”

  “Wahahaha! Look at his face, his face!” Lydia laughed, her character emoting rolling on the floor in hysterics. Kyle found his hand running down his face. He took a deep breath and sighed, he wasn’t a professional director or producer. These were college students sharing a common computer room. Barely more than kids. Who else was he going to find with time to spare to act out fanmade machinima?

  Oh, he had dreams. One day, he hoped to make it onto Broadway, see his name on a star on the Hollywood Walk…or maybe somewhere a little less famous would work too. He had a degree in English Lit. This was probably going to be the extent of his directing fame.

  Maybe put out a few videos here and there, make a few scripts that don’t ever get picked up. Start at the bottom. Work his way up. There weren’t shortcuts in the entertainment industry.

  What was the old saying?

  “It’s not who you know, it’s who your friends know.”

  …actually, he was pretty sure the saying was a lot darker, closer to “who you’re willing to sleep with” or something like that.

  But none of that mattered in the here and now. Looking at what he had to work with…it was going to be a long, loooong road. Sisyphus had his boulder and Kyle had these clowns.

  Him. Kyle Klinger. 28 year-old part-time retail worker that wrote fiction on the side.

  AKA Willcox Wobbleshaft, gnomish [Bard] and teller of tall tales.

  AKA Bartholomew Cromwell, finest thespian in all of Ebonvale.

  And they. Just. Wouldn’t. LET. HIM. COOK!!!

  ?

  “This is useless,” Kyle moaned. “I should have known better than to try to schedule something in December.”

  “Heh,” a slightly digitized voice said from his side. He turned to glance at the face of the gigantic dragon sitting stationary against the wall. “You gotta admit, farts are funny.”

  “No,” Kyle tried denying, but he was already smiling, “They’re not.”

  “Should we try for something a little bit more, I don’t know, classic?” Brandy asked. She wasn’t even in this shoot, but she was never far from Melia whenever she was online. Especially not in these last few years as the girl’s condition got worse. Brandy’s elf avatar was perched atop the dragon’s head, placed on practically the last stable pixel of one of her horns, so that only her left foot was touching and the rest of her body hovered in the air.

  Hank was sitting right below her, leaning against the horn itself.

  “You mean like, A Christmas Carol, or something?”

  “Yeah!” Brandy snapped her fingers. “We make Melia into Ebenezer Scrooge, and she’s gotta whip her act into shape as she gets visited by the ghosts of Christmas!”

  “That might not work, since me as Scrooge only really works if I’m a dragon and I can’t move as a dragon,” Melia said. Despite the partially synthesized voice, her smirk could be heard. Brandy was not dismayed.

  “Maybe we can do an E-vale version of The Grinch?”

  “Again, a little hard to go down into Whoville when, you know, I can’t move.”

  “I’m not sure I’d want to defile Dickens like that anyway,” Kyle groaned. “And besides, Ebonvale doesn’t do ‘Christmas’. It’s ‘Winter Veil’.”

  “So she’s ‘The Dragon Who Stole Winter Veil’,” Brandy laughed…before a snowball immediately hit her in the face. The shock of her vision going white actually caused her to stumble, so she fell off the horn she was balancing on with a great crash.

  “You don’t get to name things,” Hank grinned. Brandy stood up, obviously not hurt, and glared at the dwarven [Warrior]. Her model flickered as she started searching through her inventory. Eventually, she pulled out a snowball of her own.

  “Oh? Is it war you want?” Hank challenged. “Because it’s war you’ll get. I’ve got four stacks of these.”

  The resulting snowfight was somewhat anticlimactic…when it was impossible for either person to miss. Snowballs, like many items in the “toy” category, auto-aimed to whatever target they were hurled at, going so far as to bend in flight and break any law of physics to reach their destination. Players couldn’t dodge. Once a ball was thrown, that was it.

  But that didn’t stop others from wanting to get in on the action either, as everyone who was supposed to be acting out a serious play abandoned it for something more…in season. And just because the balls couldn’t miss once thrown didn’t mean they couldn’t be countered…by keeping them from being thrown in the first place. Line of sight was a very important thing, and for as young and silly as these players were, they were skilled at exploiting game mechanics.

  Melia soon found herself, amused, as the literal hill in a “King of the Hill” snowball fight. Her draconic form had enough ridges, folds, dips, and spikes to make a creative battlefield. Even Kyle abandoned trying to get things back on track and accepted a stack of snowballs, which Melia was subtly supplying to all sides. The next 30 minutes or so was chaotic, full of laughter, swearing, and just a little bit drastic when it came to dire warnings of retribution in real life.

  Eventually, they had their fill of snowballs, or at least throwing them at each other.

  “Hey,” one of the younger, newer members of the group asked. “The Winter Veil event is fully live, right?” He was staring at the snowball in his hand and had a mischievous glint in his eye. “Like, all the holiday achievements are in the game right now?”

  He got a murmur of confirmation and grinned.

  “Anybody want to join me? I’m gonna go get the one for throwing a snowball at the King of Deepholme.”

  Some perked up at the chance to earn limited-time achievements, while others finally looked at their clocks and realized the time.

  “It’s getting late,” Kyle said. “Crap, my home warp is on cooldown. Melia, can I get a port to Horizon?”

  Melia rolled her eyes and shifted back into her gnomish form. Even now that she had a race that allowed her access to all her classes, she would forever be branded as a taxi and conjurer of biscuits. As soon as she had a portal opened to the human capital, she soon had requests for everywhere else.

  “Can I get a port to Everbloom?”

  “How about Oasis?”

  “I’m working through Northgarde. Do you have that?”

  “Yo, hook me up with World’s End!”

  Melia glanced at the guy who shouted the last one and gave him the stink eye.

  Just because Melia unlocked portals to every major city didn’t mean she had to share them with everyone.

  “Have you even reached [Honored] with the dragons yet?”

  “Pft, no? Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

  “It’s [Honored]!” Melia scoffed. “It’s not even [Revered]! Go find a way for yourself!”

  “Booo!”

  World’s End wasn’t an accessible part of the map, though players were desperately running their horses against the blockading mountains, trying to find incorrectly placed geometry. If they wanted in, they needed to take a flight, which wouldn’t open to players with too low a reputation.

  Or they could grind out 25 max-level classes and become a dragon like Melia did, but it would be significantly faster to visit the embassy in Horizon and do repeatable quests.

  The raid group slowly dissolved as people took portals to their preferred locations or warped back to their saved home. Joey, the boy who wanted to complete the holiday achievements, paused before hopping through the portal to Deepholme.

  “Thanks, Melia! Hey, are you gonna join us?”

  “No thanks,” Melia shook her head. “I got that achievement last year.”

  “Ah, well, see you around!”

  Melia waited until he was just about done activating the portal before smiling wickedly.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Be careful of the guards!”

  “Wait, wha-?”

  And he was gone.

  Brandy and Hank were the only two left sitting with her in the abandoned mansion, both laughing softly.

  “You think any of them will make it out alive?” Hank asked with a chuckle.

  “Oh, they’re totally boned,” Brandy laughed.

  “I don’t envy their repair bill,” Melia grinned. “They were all wearing their raiding sets.”

  In order to appeal to a wider audience, achievements in games had been watered down over the years. Difficult challenges, which rewarded the players with a feeling of achieving something special, were replaced with something closer to a…mindless checklist for people to tick off.

  That’s why, when the developers of Fantasy Online eventually implemented achievements, many players were surprised to find that simple-sounding achievements weren’t so simple to obtain.

  As was the case with [Scrooged].

  ?

  Throw a snowball at King Thongral Ironsledge in Deepholme.

  ?

  It sounded simple. Easy. Walk into the throne room, which was open to all players, pelt the king in the face, maybe laugh, and waltz out.

  But snowballs were technically considered weapons.

  They did no damage and most players only used them on other players, so it was easy to miss the fact that they very temporarily drew aggro. Fun fact, even a single point of threat generated against a city leader was enough to have them call the guards.

  And the really devious part? Players received the achievement the moment they struck the king in the face with a snowball, but it got retracted if they died before they escaped the city and exited combat.

  Those poor boys were about to be out several hundred gold in repairs and not even have anything to show for it if they weren’t careful.

  It would serve them right: this particular achievement was a few years old at this point and well documented on the game’s wiki. If they didn’t look it up beforehand, that’s on them.

  ?

  “So what does your Christmas look like?” Melia eventually asked. “Any holiday plans?”

  Hank shut his eyes and drew his lips tight.

  “Don’t tell me they’re making you go into the office again?” Brandy groaned. “Aren’t, like, most departments closed?”

  “Mandatory overtime,” Hank groaned. “Somebody from marketing got the great idea that we needed, and I quote: ‘a bold new look for the new year’. They didn’t even specify what that means. So now all the heads are calling everybody in and nobody’s happy. I heard some people even got their vacations canceled.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Melia asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hank shrugged. “I keep my head down and do my job. They pay me well enough, but not enough to care.”

  “Duuude, that’s like the definition of a ‘black company’,” Brandy complained. “Are you okay? You should get out.”

  “Might be sunk cost fallacy at this point,” Hank groaned. “Too deep to get out, too painful to stay. This is depressing. Enough about work. You have plans?”

  “Gonna drive down to Mom and Dad’s,” Brandy sighed. “We’ve got a big family dinner planned and everything. My cousins will be there, and they’ll bring their kids. Mom will be happy, she loves when the house is full...but it’ll be loud.”

  “Don’t lie,” Melia grinned. “You love the little munchkins."

  “Oh, they’re adorable,” Brandy instantly agreed. “Adorable little crotch goblins. They can be cute and loud at the same time. It’s not mutually exclusive. They’ll be excited for gifts and I get to pinch their cheeks.”

  “And how about you?” Hank asked. Both he and Brandy turned to Melia, whose smile dimmed a little.

  “I’ll be here, I suppose,” she said lightly. It was stiff and the air in the room felt heavy. She forced a wide smile onto her face; she didn’t want to depress her friends or ruin the mood.

  “Speaking of gifts!” Melia grinned at them both. “Here! Merry Christmas!”

  Melia didn’t have a source of income, and even if she did, it wasn’t like she could go out shopping for things in real life. As such, her gifts to her friends were items in the game. They gave her indulgent smiles. Here, more than ever, it was the thought that counts.

  “For Hank,” Melia said, pulling out several wrapped gifts. The game had ways of dressing up items to give to other people, especially during holiday times, but she could only put one stack of items in each box. The boxes themselves were classic Christmas presents: red or green wrapping paper tied with orange or yellow ribbons, topped with puffy-looking bows.

  Hank looked at the first box of the small pile gathering at his feet and gave a small smile.

  “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

  “I know, but I wanted to!” Melia easily brushed it off. “Besides, it’s not like this is actually worth anything. All it took me was time.”

  Hank gave her an indulgent smile and bit back the retort of time being money. His work embodied that mantra and he hated it. All the packages were identical in shape and size, if not color, so Hank picked one up at random and opened it.

  Even though he expected something like this, it was still a pleasant surprise.

  “[Stonewall] potions?” he asked. Once the box was fully opened, the packaging fell away and his eyebrows rose. “A whole stack of them?”

  “It should be enough to last you an entire month of raids…so long as you don’t die too many times.”

  The name was simple, but the potions themselves were high-class. For Strength-based tanks, [Stonewall] potions were the best in slot elixir buff for the current expansion. They usually went for 50 to 100 gold per elixir on the auction house, and Melia gave him 20. Of course, Melia’s potions were always 5 stars.

  Hank glanced over all the other gifts with renewed interest and quickly opened them all. Melia spared no expense for his in-game gift, as he quickly found an entire array of high-end consumables sitting comfortably in his inventory. A stack for every type of buff he could have active at once.

  [Braised Babyback Behemoth] for the food buff.

  [Stonewall] potions for the elixir.

  [Endurium Shield Spikes] for the temporary shield enchant, [Titanium Weapon Chain] for his sword.

  And two whole stacks each of [Magebane] potions, [Trollblood Regeneration Potions], and [Impervious Potions]. They did not share a cooldown with the elixir buffs, lasting only a few seconds instead of 30 minutes, but could be used mid-fight as temporary ‘roid buffs as needed.

  If Hank wanted to buy one full set of all of these, it would have probably cost him several thousand gold. Melia gave him 20 of each. Hank stared at his inventory with newfound appreciation. He could see the maker’s mark when he [Inspected] each item, so he knew she didn’t buy them. It had to have taken weeks, if not longer, just to farm all of the materials.

  “Melia…this is…I don’t know what to say. I didn’t get you anything.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Melia said firmly with a smile. “All it cost me was time. And you guys choose to spend your time online with me, here, so it more than makes up for it. I can’t express enough how much that means to me.”

  Any protests Hank had died on his lips. He swallowed his pride and gave Melia a heartfelt smile.

  “Thank you. We’re fortunate to have a friend like you. Merry Christmas, Melia.”

  “Merry Christmas!” she beamed.

  Melia turned, only to find Brandy staring down at her expectantly. She resisted the urge to immediately fling her present up at the tall elf.

  “Ehh, sorry,” Melia shrugged. “I didn’t get you anything.”

  Brandy stared at her in disbelief.

  “I was going to give you a stack of [Coal],” Melia continued in an offhand way, “But I used it all making [Steel Bars].”

  Melia turned away to hide the smile creeping onto her face. Brandy’s brain eventually rebooted and she cried out in mock outrage.

  “You…you little goblin!”

  “I’m a gnome, thank you very much!” Melia replied. She reached into her inventory, pulled out a single blue-wrapped present with white lace ribbons and displayed it with a smile.

  “Merry Christmas!” she beamed, lifting it as high as she could.

  “Oh ho ho,” Brandy cackled. “It’s only a single box, so it’s gotta be good. We all know you like me more than Hank-“

  “I’m standing right here, you know.”

  “-the best,” Brandy said loudly. “You like me the BEST.”

  “Well, that’s what best friends do, right?” Melia asked, ignoring Hank’s exasperated complaints.

  “Right,” Brandy smirked. “Ok, enough stalling. What’s in the box? What’d I get what I get…ohhhh,” Brandy gasped as her eyes grew huge. “Oh Melia. How? How…did you know? How did you find her? She’s perfect!”

  The blue wrapping dissolved in sparkles of light, revealing a light blue, somewhat plastic-looking pet carrier. Pets in the game didn’t have an inventory sprite. Technically, at this point in the game’s development, pets were considered “consumable” and disappeared after adding them to a collection. But all pets, even in the beginning, came in some sort of small cage, like one might find in a vintage pet store.

  Brandy had instantly added the pet to her collection, making the carrier vanish, but…perfect may have been a bit…subjective.

  They say: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To most, the cat was downright ugly. But then again, Brandy always was a…little bit extreme when it came to collecting pets in Fantasy Online.

  “I’ve been trying to get one for months!” Brandy continued to gush. “It’s a rare spawn! Limited quantities! On a full week timer! Oh Melia, this must have taken you months. I’ve been watching the auction house! You didn’t have to!”

  The cat simply sat on the ground, licking its paws in an idle animation, all but forgotten as Brandy knelt down and drew Melia into a hug.

  It was a shame she couldn’t actually feel the crushing embrace.

  “Brandy,” Melia sighed from the depths of Brandy’s arms, “You have over a hundred and fifty pets. You have the title [Crazy Cat Lady]. Of course I had to. Do you know how hard it is to find a pet that you don’t have that isn’t soulbound? I’m pretty sure that’s the last one.”

  “Oh, but how did you get it? Like I said, I’ve been trying forever and there’s always somebody camping spawn!”

  Melia knew. She knew too well. One would think that a girl, who for all intents and purposes lived inside the game, would have easy access to anything that spawned on a predictable timer, but no. This stupid pet was unreasonably popular for all sorts of reasons.

  First and foremost, because it was rare. It was sold by an npc that was only visible when it had the kitten for sale, and it only ever had an inventory of 1. Once it sold, the npc disappeared until its inventory refreshed on Tuesday after server maintenance, and it respawned in one of 8 random locations inside Horizon over a 6 hour period. It wasn’t possible to tell if the npc simply hadn’t spawned yet, or if it sold the kitten and despawned, but players generally knew that by Wednesday, chances of finding it were slim to none.

  The fact that it was not a soulbound pet and thus able to be traded between players increased the value, and it generally went for thousands of gold on the auction house.

  The cheapest Brandy had ever seen it being sold for was 239,999 gold.

  But things only sold on the auction house if people wanted them, and there was a reason people wanted to buy this cat.

  It had the body of a ginger tabby, but the face was closer to something a toddler might draw in kindergarten, which their mom then stuck on the fridge.

  Its face was somewhat smashed, with a flat nose and a lopsided mouth, both eyes were set far apart at the edges of its face, and they were sort of out of focus. Like it had one too many concussions or some other serious trauma.

  Some people considered it cute…in a derpy sort of way, but many people found it to be deeply unsettling.

  The cat wasn’t supposed to be in the game at all.

  It was one of the earliest renders of player pets, way back in the alpha, more of a proof of concept than anything that was meant to be added to the game. Once the devs hammered out all the kinks in pet behavior, they got an overhaul, as well as beautifully sculpted models. “Felicia” was immediately scrapped.

  But not before enterprising players found her once.

  Images of the horrific cat spread and quickly gained fame for use in memes when players wanted to express their displeasure. Or annoyance. Or poke fun at something.

  It may have been a horrifying piece of nightmare fuel, but that made it so much better when shitposting.

  Eventually, “Little Timmy” was added into the game, a small orphan boy running around the capital trying to sell this kitty.

  Melia had to fight off countless other people who wanted to farm the cat, most of whom only wanted to do so in order to turn around and sell it on the auction house. While technically there wasn’t a limited quantity that could be generated by the game, it might as well be. There were only so many weeks in a year. Even now that the game was well into its first decade of life, there were still only around 600 Felicias per server.

  With a playerbase of over 19 million, finding one was like winning the lottery.

  Melia maaay have cheated just a tiny bit to get Brandy’s, but the GM investigation ruled she used fair play and she wasn’t even suspended.

  “I noticed that two of the eight spawn locations were close together,” Melia smirked. “Close enough that, with a few [Elixers of Giant Growth], careful use of a [World Shrinker], and that [Engineering] teleporter ‘debuff’, my character model was able to cover both of them.”

  Hank stared at Melia, stunned. Her dragon model was already huge, but making it even bigger? He’d seen her sitting around in Horizon for weeks and thought she was just showing off. Brandy started cackling maniacally.

  “Melia! That’s fantastic! Can you imagine people trying to navigate those streets and suddenly, they can’t see because a fat dragon is in the way?”

  “I got pulled aside by a GM,” Melia grinned. “They told me not to do it again, but they let it slide this time.”

  Brandy held Melia tightly for a little while longer while she and Hank admired her new pet.

  All three players found themselves staring at the cat, transfixed. Like most entities in the game, if a player clicked on it or interacted with it, it would turn to face them. However, this cat was unique in that while somebody was focused on it, it would not move. It would stare at them, unblinking…silently judging them.

  After a certain point, Brandy had to put it away.

  ?

  Hank stayed on for a while longer, reluctant to return to the normal world. Normally, Brandy would stay logged in for several more hours, late into the night, but tonight she couldn’t. Instead, she listened to Melia talk for a little while, listening to what she planned to do for the next several hours before bed, encouraging her to really dive into things despite Melia not really feeling in the mood. It almost felt like Brandy was trying to keep her in the game, or at least distracted, but she had no idea why. It was probably her imagination anyway, since her best friend truly was invested in the life Melia had made for herself.

  Eventually, Brandy logged off and Melia warped back home. She didn’t go to her guild housing, but went to her apartment instead. Unlike the guild property, which had a physical location inside the world, apartments were simply instanced zones that players warped to from their fast travel menu. Technically, there was a generic-looking apartment tower located in each major city, but all apartments in that zone were connected to the same door.

  Melia’s guild house was open to the public, just in case anybody wanted to wander in and look at her questionable design tastes. She had all sorts of crazy things on display, not bothering to follow any sort of interior decorating code, electing to show off rare and complicated recipes.

  She had a large aquarium in the basement filled with rare [Fishing] catches, not all of which were fish.

  Her apartment was private. And to look inside of it, one would never guess that it belonged to one of the richest players on any server, in the entire game. It was small, sparsely decorated, and plain.

  It was as close as possible that Melia could make it to be a perfect replica of her original room.

  It had a dresser, a rug on the floor, a mirror on the wall, and a simple twin-sized bed.

  That’s it.

  It spoke to humble upbringings, but it was hers. And as her memories of living in it slowly faded, this room helped her to never forget the love and joy she found inside.

  Melia sat around for a while, reminiscing about bygone days, lost in a melancholy mood. She, too, eventually logged out.

  ?

  Melia opened her groggy eyes, blinking away the building crust. Her hospital room, as always, was peaceful…quiet. But today, something different greeted her alongside the gentle whirring of the life-giving engines circulating her air, refreshing her fluids, and keeping her alive. Melia’s eyes instantly filled with tears.

  Lights.

  String lights. Christmas lights.

  Greens, reds, yellows, and the occasional blue, draped decoratively along the border of her glass tube. Though her internal atmosphere was kept at a constant 72 degrees, the lights gave the feeling of warmth on a cold night. Of frosty breath puffed out of mouths partially obscured by scarves and fireplaces crackling merrily. Not bright, hardly enough to illuminate a figure slumped against the wall in the corner.

  Brandy had arrived, and her not-so-subtle attempts to keep Melia inside the game finally made sense. She must have logged off so early and driven across town despite living almost an hour away, just to decorate Melia’s room.

  Some people would have said it was unnecessary. A waste of time, since the patient in the room couldn’t even get out of her bed and experience the season. But none of those people were Brandy, her very best friend of 20 years.

  Because there was something else Melia could see when her eyes were free of tears.

  The slowly fading discoloration of a finger dragged over glass, where a hot breath fogged it up. Two words. Two simple words, and Melia knew she was loved.

  Merry Christmas!